


So I Can Feel Infinity

by catjeno



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sex, Jaemin Needs a Hug, Miscommunication, but not between nomin, i literally wrote this whole thing while listening to marina, so the fic has electra heart vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22865743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catjeno/pseuds/catjeno
Summary: Oh dear diary, I met a boyHe made my doll heart light up with joyOh dear diary, we fell apartWelcome to the life of Electra Heart//Jeno had a pretty good idea what Jaemin did every night, how he gave himself up to strangers, but it was only ever through glimpses. But this? This was something else entirely.
Relationships: Lee Jeno & Na Jaemin, Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin if you squint
Kudos: 41





	So I Can Feel Infinity

**Author's Note:**

> as the tags say i listened to Marina almost exclusively while writing this. basically i heard bubblegum bitch and teen idle and just went batshit i Needed to write a nomin fic with those vibes. so here's the result of that uhhh
> 
> p.s. i HIGHLY reccomend listening to the electra heart album while reading, specifically the songs mentioned above bc that's the only energy i was trying to portray into this fic

_I wanna be a virgin pure  
A twenty first century whore  
I want back my virginity  
So I can feel infinity_

• • • • •

“Why do you keep doing this?” The words were low, and Jaemin didn’t dare to give the hope that they were anything other than angry. A million thoughts raced through his mind, like how exactly had Jeno found him, after all this work to hide? After all he had done to go to the clubs in the crappiest part of town and lock himself up in these rooms, hidden away, yet Jeno still found him.

Jaemin wondered what had gone through Jeno’s mind moments ago when he found Jaemin standing in this smokey room, shirt half off. Bathed in the weird dim magenta mood lighting, stained lips slightly swollen and marks of love still fresh on his skin.

“Doing what?” Jaemin pouted, challenging. He cocked his head to the side, and a tuft of hair fell over his eyes. He left it there.

“ _This!_ ” Jeno thrusted his hand out around them. To Jaemin’s disheveled figure, the old leather couches and the musk of cheap perfume and cigarettes in the air. Jeno had a pretty good idea of what Jaemin did almost every night, but it had only ever been through glimpses; the plum of a hickey poking out from under his friend’s shirt, a swatch of makeup that had missed being wiped off. But this? This was something else entirely. Staring at the boy now, every detail on him was so fresh and potent and raw, it felt wrong. Like a secret he shouldn’t have witnessed. “Going out and fucking a new person every night, giving up your body like that.”

Jaemin stiffened. Smeared lipstick, not his, moved with his lips as he spoke. “What I do is none of your business,” he snapped.

Little did Jeno know, but Jaemin understood that exact sense, the secret. That’s what this whole room was: a dirty secret. Jaemin practically lived in that feeling. Too often he breathed in the room’s sickening murmurs of love, letting it fill him with that disgusting sense of smugness that came with it. The feeling that he knew a tainted secret. That he was the tainted secret. Night after night, it built layers of shame and grime on him that he knew would never come off. His skin itched at the thought.

It was disgusting.

Being skin to skin with someone new every night. Reaching out for something he could not have otherwise. Knowing that in this room and in this room only, he was wanted, just for a little while.

It was addicting.

“Why are you even here anyways?” Jaemin pushed. “I thought an oh so pretentious church boy like you would never step foot near a place like this, let alone inside.”

“Because this needs to stop.” Jeno looked around. He considered sitting down on one of the two couches in the cramped room, but another glance to the fifty or so not-so-mystery stains on the sagging leather made him decide he’d rather keep standing. So instead he took a step towards Jaemin.

The boy was a mess. If everything else about his appearance didn’t give it away, the smell of alcohol did. It wasn’t strong enough to make Jeno panic, but it still made him wince. “How much did you drink?” he asked cautiously.

“I already told you—” The room gave a purple tint to Jaemin’s icy glare, “—what I do is none of your business.”

“It is if you die from alcohol poisoning.” Jeno was doing his absolute best to keep his voice steady. “Or if someone tries to hurt you while you’re drunk.”

Jaemin stiffened even more. “I can take care of myself, Jeno,” he spat as much poison into the name as he could, feeling a little too pleased when he saw a flash of hurt make its way across Jeno’s face.

It didn’t last long though. Jeno’s features hardened a moment later as he took a step closer. “That’s the thing, I don’t think you can. Have you taken a second to look at yourself recently? You look like—”

“Like what?” Jaemin cut him off. “Let me guess. I look like a _whore_.” The word danced too easily off the tip of his tongue. He said it so plainly, so blatantly, when the word should have been a deadly poison. But all that poison had just leaked onto Jaemin instead, through the hickeys, through the shitty wine, through the strangers. He was the poison, he was the danger.

The word was just a word. It was Jaemin who was the whore.

Jeno cringed. “No, Jaemin I—”

“No, go ahead. Say it. Because for a matter of fact I _do_ know what I look like right now.” Shirt thrown haphazardly on his torso. Smudged red lipstick and fresh hickeys trailing up his neck. Face flushed from alcohol. Smelling like cheap wine and expensive cologne. Degraded. “I look like the very definition of whore right now, but you know what? I don’t care,” he stopped to let out a small, slightly hysterical laugh. “I don’t fucking care. _You_ don’t care. Abou’ me, I mean.” He slurred the last sentence.

_“What?”_

Jaemin ignored Jeno, instead flopping down on the dirty couch nearest to him. He was used to the filth. He practically lived in it by now; as much as he tried to scrub himself clean in the shower he knew there was always something he couldn’t get to. A piece of sin stuck under his fingernails, or in some other crack, buried deep. This was who Jaemin was now. He was surprised Jeno even came looking for him at this point, he was too far gone. Buried in the filth and the shame.

“Please, jus’ go home. You shouldn’t have come here. To whoreland.” Jaemin giggled at his own joke (if that’s what it could even be called). “Whoreland,” he repeated to himself quietly then giggled again.

“What the fuck, Jaemin?” Jeno’s annoyed face appeared in Jaemin’s vision, bathed in smokey magenta. “Care to explain how I don’t care about you?”

“Because,” Jaemin started and then stopped. He didn’t have the words, or frankly the energy, to explain it. Jeno and Jaemin had been so close, and then suddenly they weren’t. Something, multiple things, had happened, but Jaemin couldn’t pinpoint each and every one of them. He just knew he missed Jeno.

He didn’t even know how this—what he did with people in this humid, dirty room—started. He didn’t even know _why_ he did it, it was just something to do. A distraction, a way to feel needed, a place to express himself, any excuse Jaemin could come up with he told himself, repeated each a million times a day, fell asleep drilling the phrases into his head. But it never helped, not really.

It had always felt wrong to some degree, even when he started. Jaemin couldn’t tell if he got number to it each time or if it just became more wrong. Probably both. But he couldn’t stop, he realized this was the only place that accepted him, the only place where he could give up a part of him and get something wanted out of it. It seemed that washing off the makeup and the shame and the _dirtiness_ every morning had become his fate. It was wrong to stop. It was wrong to keep doing it.

Jaemin really was in purgatory, wasn’t he?

And Jeno, really the only person he wanted to be with, to simply talk to, wasn’t there for him. Jaemin supposed it was his fault, at least to some degree. But every time his heart clenched when he saw Jeno with Renjun or Donghyuck, all three very clearly on top of the world, he remembered why he did this in the first place.

So the cycle continued, day after day, night after night.

However Jaemin didn’t think he could describe any of this to Jeno sober, he definitely couldn’t do it right now. The best he could do was respond with a question. “Why did you wait so long to come and find me?”

The response was immediate. “Because you’re destroying yourself!” Jeno cried out. “You’re so willing to do anything with a complete stranger, you just give your body up like that and you’re clearly miserable. I see how you wince at the marks they give you when you see your reflection, and god Jaemin, I can't even _remember_ the last time I’ve seen you smile genuinely. I don’t want you to keep hurting yourself like this.”

Silence. Jaemin locked eyes with Jeno, swimming in the chocolate irises. They were as soft as ever, pure—

And then they were gone. Jeno had broken eye contact.

“You haven’t hung out with us in a while. It’s not the same,” Jeno muttered to the floor. He looked back up, sad. Longing. Jaemin’s heart wrenched, he barely caught the next words Jeno said. “We… _I_ …miss you.”

Jaemin just stared. What? Jeno missed him? No, that didn’t make sense. Jaemin wanted to believe it, he wanted more than anything in the world to believe it. But it didn’t make sense, first Renjun and Donghyuck, and now…

Jaemin brushed a hand along the bruises on his neck. His fingers came back waxy, smeared with a light coat of lipstick. Suddenly the smells of perfume and smoke that he had become so desensitized to overwhelmed him, invading his nose and lungs and choking him.

His skin was too tight. His lungs were too heavy; he couldn’t breathe. Out, he needed to get out. He was coated in grime, he just knew it, there must’ve been layers upon layers of it on him and he needed to escape. His fingers dug into his arms, squeezing until they were numb, until a trickle of blood broke through the skin and stained his nails crimson.

He squeezed his eyes shut, sinuses burning with oncoming tears. He could only focus on the pain in his arms, hugging himself tighter as a grounding, his only twisted version of comfort. “But I’m—” he choked on his words, “—’m so _dirty_.”

A hand placed itself on one of his own. Jaemin’s eyes shot open as he jerked away. “No!” he shrieked. Jeno couldn’t touch him. No one could touch him, Jaemin would just infect them with his poison and curse them with his shame. He had to get away.

Jeno jumped back, startled. Jaemin’s eyes darted erratically from his own hands to Jeno to the door. What’s more, they kept faltering, unfocusing for a moment then snapping back. He was too fragile, crumpled in on himself on that stupid couch, covered in makeup that wasn’t his and marks he didn’t want.

“Jaemin…” Jeno spoke. The name floated into the dim pink of the air, settling thick into the smoke and perfume.

“You, you can’t miss me.” Jaemin slurred. He was still holding his arms in his hands. “Y’can’t. Not when you have Donghyuck and Renjun, not when you’re all so happy so good and pure. You can’t miss a person who spends more nights in strangers’ beds than his own. Who has new marks on him every day that don’t go away even if he showers for hours on end afterwards and scrubs his arms raw. You jus' can't do it. Y’can’t miss a whore.”

“Stop calling yourself that!” Jeno snapped. “It’s demeaning.”

“‘S’ _true_ ,” Jaemin pushed. “I’m far too gone to be anything not.”

Guilt pulsed through Jeno. He knew something was going on with Jaemin, but the pure level of self-deprecation the boy kept implying was heartbreaking. Jeno noticed something was off weeks ago, they all did, he should have confronted Jaemin sooner.

Deciding Jaemin was more important than avoiding whatever stains were on the couch, he sat down. Jaemin watched him with cautious eyes as the leather sagged even more under his weight, but didn’t protest. He looked so small, so _tired_ , Jeno had to resist putting a hand on him for reassurance. He had seen the panic that flashed through Jaemin’s eyes earlier, he didn’t want that to happen again.

“Why do you keep doing it?” Jeno asked softly. “All of this, I mean.” He gestured flatly around the room again, to Jaemin and his disheveled appearance. It wasn’t threatening this time, there was only genuine concern and oh, when did Jaemin last hear that tone used toward him?

Jaemin quieted for a moment, eyes glazed over. Jeno could practically see the storm raging inside his head. Eventually the boy just shook his head and offered instead, “I’m sick of it. I can never get clean, Jeno. I—I—” He looked up weakly, eyes welling with tears. “I hate this room.”

Jaemin couldn't take it anymore. He crumpled, right into Jeno’s side. He still felt filthy, much too filthy to be allowed a hug, but he was also tired. If Jeno was okay with hugging him, then he supposed it would be okay just this once.

Jeno embraced Jaemin. He rubbed small circles into his back, like he did when they were younger, as Jaemin let quiet tears into Jeno’s shoulder. Under the musk of alcohol, cologne, and cigarettes Jeno caught a whiff of Jaemin’s fruity shampoo. He almost cracked a smile. Jaemin had used the same shampoo for years. After all the torment he’d put his body and mind through, he still cared enough to use that shampoo. At least something had stayed normal in Jaemin’s life.

“We’re gonna get through this,” Jeno muttered. “I’m here for you. I promise.”

Sometimes those words were all one needed to hear. Jaemin, for the first time that night, let his guard down and allowed himself to believe Jeno. He considered the chance that he’d never see this room again. No more lipstick and bruises staining his neck, no more shitty cheap wine and perfume, no more cigarette stained air and no more sitting in the shower until his skin turned red to try to get clean.

Because now he had a glimmer of what he’d been longing for for who knows how long. Someone he knew that cared, really cared.

He nodded into Jeno’s shirt, far from okay, but for now content.

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics in the summary were from bubblegum bitch, lyrics at the beginning of the story were from Teen Idle (i think i have an addiction to these songs omfg)


End file.
